


Into the Life of Things

by raspberryhunter



Category: Legally Blonde - All Media Types, Legally Blonde - Hach/O'Keefe/Benjamin, Tam Lin - Pamela Dean
Genre: F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Married Couple, Ratings: PG, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-23
Updated: 2011-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janet and Thomas go to grad school and law school, respectively, and over the course of several years get to know two other law students quite well. One is an immediate friend, and the other takes more work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the star to every wandering bark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metonymy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/gifts).



> I have, of course, played extremely fast and loose with _Tam Lin_ 's setting in time, moving up the action by quite a few years in order for Thomas and Emmett to be in the same year at law school. Since _Tam Lin_ is such a timeless book, I'm hoping the seams don't show too much! (I've also taken advantage of this to let Janet read some books that wouldn't have been published at the time of the original setting.)

Janet liked Emmett immediately when Thomas brought him home for dinner. She'd been quite pleased when Thomas asked, tentatively, if she thought it would be okay with the Sprat if he invited someone over; she still worried that law school wasn't the right fit for him, and she was relieved to find he was making friends.

"He seems interesting," Thomas told her, in between trying to coax Sophia to eat her broccoli. "Right here on the spoon, Sprat. -Not an English major, worse luck, nor Classics -- which might after all be to his favor -- but he's read many of the right books, and I think he can be trained up to the ones he's missed. We do need to take him to see some Shakespeare, mind. He's a little crazy, too -- freshman proctoring _and_ temping at a law firm in addition to class, can you imagine? I don't know how he sleeps. I only got him to come to dinner with the promise that we'd review Torts afterwards."

Thomas continued, "He's rather impressive, really. I know who he is because he got thrown out of Stromwell's class the very first day; he'd done the reading, but not well enough." Janet nodded; Thomas had complained to her often enough about how strict Stromwell was, and how often students got kicked out of her class, although Thomas had so far avoided this fate. "And I suspect he approached a couple of study groups who were wary of him because of it." Thomas frowned. "Well. Since then, even on his own, he's been doing quite well in class, but I think he needs a friend; he's a bit of a lone wanderer. -Sprat, lovie, that piece might be too big."

Janet, coming back to the table with more food, dropped a kiss on Thomas’s head as she laughed at the spectacle of Sophia trying to cram a huge chunk of broccoli into her mouth. The talk turned to what foods Emmett might like and how much tolerance he was likely to have for food thrown on the floor.

Emmett, the next evening, turned out to have a fairly high tolerance for food on the floor, which was a good thing, as Sophia was apparently bent on impressing him by showing how far under the table she could throw the pieces of bread she was given. After several rounds of this, Janet gave up and went into the kitchen to rummage around for something to wipe up the crumbs.

When she returned, Emmett and Thomas had started discussing _The Tempest_ , which apparently Thomas had browbeaten Emmett into seeing. "I still don't see why Prospero had to break his staff at the end," Emmett said doggedly. "Why would he give up that power?"

"That's a superficial reading," Thomas retorted. "Power, surely, but at what price? What's he making himself into? What is he opening himself up to?"

Janet remarked from under the table, a little muffled, "You know, it does seem rather like someone should have given him the advice to just renounce the not-so-great parts and keep the rest."

Thomas said, sounding a bit strangled, "I don't think it works like that. Prospero can't just give up the bad parts; the corruption is running through all of it and infects even the parts that seem good. He's got to make a fresh start in a different world, and that means giving up his magic."

Janet looked at him, a little worried, but before she could say anything, Sophia, apparently deciding it was time to make her own opinion known, pronounced emphatically, "Dadadada!" All three adults smiled. Emmett asked, "How many words can she say?"

The talk went from there to Sophia's general development, to Emmett's childhood reading, to Janet's courses as a first-year graduate student, to a general comparison of Janet's experience in the Harvard English department to Emmett's and Thomas's experiences at Harvard Law, with suitable interjections by Sophia, who appeared to fancy herself a great expert in all these matters, of a dogmatic "Dis!" or "Baba!" Emmett was frank, opinionated (but willing to have his opinion changed), and had interesting things to say both about books and law school; he was, Janet thought, someone she was interested to get to know better, and all in all a quite satisfactory friend for Thomas to have made.

Finally it was Sophia's bedtime; tonight it was Janet's shift. "Well, Emmett," Janet said, "this was fun; we'll have to do this again."

"Em!" Sophia said loudly. "Em, Em, Em!"

Thomas beamed. "It's settled, then," he said. "Lo, the mouth of the Sprat hath spoken it. You're to be one of the family."

Emmett smiled, his whole face lighting up, and Janet smiled back. "I'd like that," he said.


	2. looks on tempests and is never shaken

The week was hard enough when Thomas didn't make it home until midnight three days in a row, but when he informed Janet that he was going to be hunkered down with his study group most of Saturday, she couldn't help saying, a little snippily, "I thought this parenting thing was going to be a joint endeavor."

Thomas retorted, "I don't have the luxury of waiting around until the last minute to write papers like you do for your classes. Law school doesn't work like that --"

Janet said, stung, "Grad school isn't exactly a walk in the park either, Thomas -- "

There was a knock at the door, and Emmett poked his head in, as he had come to do over the last year. "Hey, I --" he began.

"Look, my doing well in law school is what's going to put food on the table for the three of us," Thomas shouted. "A little more support here --"

Emmett's eyes flickered from Thomas to Janet and back again. "I, er," he said. His eyes fell on Sophia, who was being very quiet. "Why don't I just take the Sprat for a walk?"

"Sure," Janet and Thomas said more-or-less in unison, and Janet added, as Emmett closed the door again, "I never asked for you to do this! We could starve together as postdocs, and that would be just fine with me -- "

The argument went on, until five minutes later, with a last cry of "As I've observed before, you are the _dimmest_ intelligent woman I have ever met!" Thomas hurtled out the door. Janet sat down on the carpet with a thump.

Not thirty seconds later, Emmett poked his head around the door again, rather more cautiously this time. "I saw Thomas walking away -- " he started.

"He's probably gone to get ice cream," Janet volunteered.

"That's what he said," Emmett said, looking bemused, but opening the door further and ushering Sophia in. "Emmett Sophie see boom boom red car," Sophia proclaimed, at the same time Emmett said, "Is everything all right?"

Janet took pity on him. "I guess it's one of those things that makes sense if you've read _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ \-- have you?"

"I have. Formative book in my early years, and all that." Emmett looked enlightened. Ah -- ice cream for company? And an apology?"

Janet's lips quirked. "Just so. Speaking of apologies, I guess I should apologize for you having to see that. We do have these blow-out fights from time to time -- I'm surprised you haven't walked in on one before now, quite frankly. It doesn't -- well, I won't say they don’t mean anything, they obviously do, we wouldn't have them if we didn't feel quite strongly, but the past couple of years with Thomas have taught me that they're pretty normal for us. It lets off some steam, and then we can discuss things reasonably.”

Emmett said, with feeling, "I'm glad it's all right. When I hear people fight like that -- well. Let's just say that my upbringing didn't really show me that it was possible to fight in a non-dysfunctional way."

Janet nodded; he'd never gone into details, but she'd definitely gotten the impression that his upbringing was very different from hers. "I'm still mad at him, mind you. And I'm sure he's still mad at me." She sighed. "Oh, and thanks for taking Sophia out -- we usually wait until she's gone to bed to quarrel, but it's been a hard week."

Emmett said more hesitantly, "I heard a little of that, and -- and I know it's none of my business, but I thought I should say -- You know, Thomas isn't in law school because he felt like he had to be. He actually really likes it. And he's _good_ at it, too, Janet, you know." He grinned suddenly. "You might be able to tell, actually, from the way he argues. But he loves teasing apart the thread of defining what exactly people are arguing about, and how that corresponds to the precise meaning of words. He's going to be an excellent lawyer."

Janet breathed out. "I... didn't know that. Of course, I hoped; but everyone hopes her spouse is brilliant, right? So thank you."

*

Later, in bed, Thomas rubbed the knots out of Janet’s shoulders as she sprawled across the bed. He said, low, "I should apologize. I shouldn't have said that about grad school. I actually really enjoy law school; I have no regrets about going. It's just been a long week, and I took it out on you, and I'm sorry."

"Emmett did mention that you enjoy it. He was concerned." Janet said slowly, "What he said helped a lot. I think that one of the reasons I was so upset was that I've always worried that you didn't do law school because you really wanted to. I always worried that you would really rather have done grad school. I know I kept telling you that you didn't have to feel that you needed to do it for me, or for the Sprat -- but I still worried."

"I do love it," Thomas said softly. "But I also wanted to do law school because it was... untainted. Because it's not at all the sort of thing Medeous would do, you see, and so I could be unafraid while doing it. I don't think I could do graduate school, even in a subject other than Classics, without having to look over my shoulder all the time."

Janet threw a pillow at him. "Idiot. You could have _told_ me that, you know. I get that."

Thomas grinned, a bit shakily. "I know. But I was having trouble telling myself that."


	3. an ever-fixed mark

Janet sighed. Thomas and Emmett were going at it again. "You'll wake the Sprat," she said.

"I don't care," Thomas said. "And anyway she's probably used to it by now. Look, Emmett, you can't be thinking of taking that job after graduation. Are you nuts? Callahan will chew you up and spit you out!"

Emmett didn't yell like Thomas -- Janet had never heard him raise his voice at all -- but his face was white with anger, and his fists were clenched. "You know what this means to me, Thomas," he said. "You know what a job with Callahan will do for my career."

"Your career!" Thomas shouted. "I don't give a-- a fig for your _career_ , if you're going to be destroyed by it! Does any other professor at this school talk about blood in the water? That man is an ethics disaster waiting to happen! I didn't even apply for Callahan's internship, and you know why. "

"And I said you were crazy then, too. You would have gotten it for sure, and then I wouldn't have to work with Jones, you _know_ what he's like, and you would be all set, you wouldn't have to worry about money ever again --"

"Money isn't the issue here. Look, Emmett, we have a small child, I understand what it's like to worry about money -- "

"You don't," Emmett contradicted. "You didn't grow up like I did. Hell, you took seven years to finish college. Do you think I wouldn't have liked to take more time than I did? Do you think I _wanted_ to work and take classes at the same time?"

Thomas changed tacks, apparently unwilling to detail all the reasons why he had spent so long in college. "Come work with me at Stromwell's. It's not going to kill your career; she has an excellent reputation. We'll be fine. I bet she'd still take you. You were her favorite student, after all."

"We've been over this before, Thomas. This is not what I want. Can't you understand that what I want and what you want are two different things?"

There was a short silence. Thomas scowled horribly. "I guess it could be all right. I mean, you're solid. I can't see Callahan changing that."

"Thanks," Emmett said dryly.

Thomas laughed, abruptly. Emmett looked startled -- Janet knew he had never quite been able to adjust to Thomas's mercurial moods -- but relaxed a little. "Look. How about this. If I start to see this job messing with the Emmett we know and love, I'll punch you in the nose. And petition Stromwell for a job for you. And otherwise I'll shut up, thou proud and insolent youth."

Emmett smiled slightly. "You don’t make a very good dark and sinister man, but all right. It's a deal."


	4. whose worth's unknown, although height be taken

Janet didn't _exactly_ hate Elle the first time they met. Emmett had phoned to ask whether he could bring Elle to Thanksgiving dinner. "I feel bad because she's canceled her Thanksgiving plans to stay and study," Emmett said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it was the right decision, she totally needs to study more, but I feel sorry for her. She's really trying."

Thomas said gravely, "And are we to read anything into the fact that you've never brought anyone home to see us before?"

"It's not like that," Emmett protested. "I just felt sorry for her. She's just a friend I'm tutoring in law. She's trying to win back her ex-boyfriend, so it's not like she's even exactly available in the first place."

Elle turned out to be blonde and bubbly, exuding a sorority-girl vibe, and pretty much completely unlike what Janet would have expected from a friend of Emmett's. She showed up with Emmett in a pink dress so bright it nearly burned Janet's eyes out from twenty paces, bringing a bowl of mashed potatoes (previously agreed upon), a plate of brownies (not agreed upon, but eagerly accepted by Thomas), and a present for Sophia, who pounced upon it avidly. The package turned out to contain a My Little Pony -- a pink one! Janet hadn't even known they still made them -- which apparently, unbeknownst to Janet, Sophia had been lusting after.

"How did you know she wanted one?" Janet asked.

Elle grinned and stroked Emmett's arm. "Emmett's my spy," she said. "I asked him to ask Sophia what she wanted most in all the world, so I could start off on the right foot." Emmett shrugged in mock guilt, but said nothing.

It had certainly worked for Sophia, Janet admitted to herself, seeing how Sophia followed Elle around, demanding that Elle look at her brush the pony's tail and insisting on telling Elle the details of what Sophia imagined the pony would do every day. The rest of dinner worked a little less well. Elle seemed totally out of her depth when Janet, Thomas, and Emmett bantered about books or plays, occasionally trying to interject a comment that often seemed to miss the point entirely. Elle's own stories, Janet thought, were either dull or pointless; many of them seemed to feature the ex-boyfriend Elle was following around, who had the unfortunate name of Warner. ("Huntington the Third," Emmett supplied, amused.) The only times she seemed to come into her own were when Thomas, Emmett, and Elle started discussing some arcane point of law, at which point, of course, Janet was rather lost. Watching Elle pat Thomas's shoulder in response to a point he'd made, Janet was seized by a wholly irrational jealousy that she immediately tamped down, and then, more determinedly, started to think about.

"What did you think of Elle?" Thomas asked afterwards.

Janet considered. "She is very... pink," Janet said finally, and added conscientiously, "The mashed potatoes were very good, and so were the brownies."

Thomas sighed. "I know you don't like her," he said, "but let's try, okay? For Emmett's sake. I think they're good friends."

"It's hard for me to like someone who hasn't even heard of Madeleine L'Engle," Janet said. "Even Tina --" Thomas's face was perfectly blank, in a way that Janet knew meant he was laughing at her. "Stop that!" she cried, starting to laugh herself.

"I'm not saying a thing!" Thomas pointed out, but he cracked a smile.

Janet poked him in the ribs with her elbow. "I know, I know. It's like Tina all over again, isn't it? Only, let's face it, Tina _had_ read L'Engle."

"I'll give you that," Thomas allowed.

Janet thought some more. "Another reason I didn't like her, that it took me a while to realize, is that she _touches_ people. I guess I'm not used to that."

Thomas looked a little startled. "I suppose that makes sense," he said. "Cultural mores, and all that. I didn't think about it -- Nick and Robin and that crew were tactile as well, and the acting world in general, when I was doing that -- but your graduate school friends aren't that way, and neither are any of the other lawyers I know. Emmett's not that way, either."

Janet sighed. "On the other hand, the Sprat likes her. And the Sprat generally has good judgement -- she did like Emmett, after all. And yeah, Tina turned out to be just fine. I'll try."


	5. love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

Janet was in a bad mood, which was not improved when the person at the door turned out to be Elle, looking for Emmett -- something about an internship that Janet didn't bother to sort through. Janet said she hadn't seen Emmett at all. "That's all right," Elle replied with a small giggle, "I guess I'm just a little too keyed up about it right now. How are you doing, Janet?"

Janet, to her mortification, instead of saying, "Oh, I'm fine," as she had fully intended, said instead, "Grad school isn't anything like I thought it would be. I don't know what to do on my dissertation, I'm feeling lonely and isolated from the rest of the department, I don't know what I'm doing here! And Thomas has a job, he’s making money, and meanwhile I don’t even know when I’m going to be done with my dissertation. I thought I would love it, and now I don't know what to think."

There was silence. Janet felt miserable, and even more miserable that Elle, of all people, she of the pink dresses and blonde hair, was the one to hear how unhappy she was.

Elle broke the silence by saying conversationally, "I almost quit law school in January."

Elle didn't look at Janet at all, speaking determinedly to the window. "Don't tell Emmett. He has no idea -- he'd been helping me for a couple of months by that point, we'd finally got to where I was getting pretty good at grinding through the material and was doing well in class, he'd be shocked and disappointed to hear I was thinking about quitting -- but I couldn't see through to the end. I couldn't see what I was doing it _for_."

Elle continued, still not looking at Janet. "I got kind of depressed. I don't even know why I kept going -- I think at that point it just came down to pride, not wanting Harvard to think it had beaten me. And... and then, a little while later, I was able to use some of what I'd learned to help a friend, and I realized that I did like it after all."

Elle finished, weakly, "I don't know that it's quite like that for you -- but -- I wonder if -- maybe -- you'll see, when you think about it, that grad school is helping you learn the things you wanted to learn." She paused. "Also," she continued, infusing some cheerfulness into her voice, and turning to look at Janet, "you know what makes me feel better? Buying clothes with friends -- do you want to go shopping this weekend?"

Elle looked vulnerable and a little scared, and Janet was suddenly hit by how hard it must have been for Elle to have said those things and to make that offer, when Janet hadn't really been disguising how she felt about Elle. Janet was immediately smitten by remorse. "Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim," Janet said solemnly. "All right, then, Elle, let's go shopping."

Elle looked confused, but smiled back.

“…Under one condition,” Janet warned.

“What’s that?”

“We go book shopping as part of the deal.”

Elle looked like she was about to protest, but swallowed it. “Okay.”

*

That evening, Janet opened up her notebook to a blank page. She stared at it. She wrote some words down. Then more words, making a list. She started arranging the words on the page.

Thomas walked in from putting Sophia down. "Janet, what are you doing?"

"I'm writing a poem," Janet said abstractedly, continuing to arrange the words.

Thomas sat down on the bed, let out a breath. "I'm... glad. I haven't seen you write a poem in a while."

"I was in a rut," Janet acknowledged. "I... talked to Elle today, and she said some things that made me think I might try again."

Thomas said, amused, "So she's not all bad, then?"

Janet looked up at him and smiled. "Yes, okay, you were right. She's still pink, but... I think I could get to be friends with her anyway."

*

By the weekend, Janet had had second thoughts, and third thoughts, about the whole shopping business. Janet hated clothes shopping with a passion, and doing it with Elle didn’t seem like it would make it a better experience.

Elle, though, looked quite excited when Janet met her at the Galleria, and Janet thought she might as well go through with it. She quickly realized that it was, in fact, both easier and more pleasant to shop with Elle, mostly because Elle seemed to have a preternatural skill in approaching a clothes rack and instantly extracting the clothes that might look good on Janet. “Hey, I have a degree in Fashion Merchandising,” Elle said, in response to Janet’s comment to that effect. “ _Summa cum laude_. Gotta be good for something, right?”

Janet said, despite herself, “ _What_ do you study in a Fashion Merchandising degree?”

Elle shrugged. “It’s a bit of a hodgepodge. Fashion design, of course. Textiles. I could tell you so much about Chinese silk… Business and marketing. Art. Speaking of which, Janet, please tell me you’ve been to the Museum of Fine Arts.”

Janet laughed. “Of course I’ve been to the MFA! We used to go a lot when Sophia was younger, but now she prefers the Children’s Museum. Why do you ask?”

Elle grinned triumphantly. “Good, I can poke Emmett! He’s lived in Boston his whole life and he hasn’t ever gone. I told him that was terrible, and now I have further evidence!”

Janet realized that, if someone had asked her to guess which of the two of them – Elle or Emmett – had been to the MFA, she would have said Emmett, definitely, and she felt a bit ashamed of herself. But by this time Elle had moved on to another rack of clothes. “Oh my God, Janet,” she said. “I bet this blouse will look amazing on you. You have got to try this on!”

“It’s bright pink,” Janet objected weakly.

“Don’t you have any pink clothes?” Elle asked, rummaging through the rack. “You have the sort of complexion that looks great in pink, I say you should embrace it.” She held up another shirt. “Try this one, too. It’s green, is that better? Let’s see if I can find it in purple, I think that would work just a bit better with your skin tone.”

To Janet’s chagrin, Elle was right about the pink blouse, which did, in fact, look amazing on her. Elle airily and effortlessly ordered a saleswoman to find tailored pants that complemented it, in an unconsciously arrogant way such that Janet almost expected her to say, “You have my permission to go.” Janet looked in the mirror and drew in a breath. “I think I’ve found the outfit to wear when I present at the conference in New York next month,” she said. “Only could we _please_ find it in another color than pink?”

“As long as you get this one too,” Elle said. Elle was totally laughing at her, Janet thought, but that was okay. “And we need to get this one too – it’s on sale – look, it’ll look great on you, it just needs to be taken in a bit. I can do that if necessary, although I know a great seamstress out in Porter Square –“

“Of course you do,” Janet said, grinning.

Later, in the used section of the Harvard Bookstore, Elle managed to look only slightly cross-eyed as Janet loaded her up with a number of favorite fantasy and science fiction books. “I don’t know, Janet,” she said, a little dubiously. “I never went in for fairy princesses or any of that, and I’m definitely not into space battles like Emmett is.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Janet said. “But, you know, the fairy princesses and space battles – and you should feel lucky I’m not giving you a book with both of them – aren’t what it’s really about. These two, for instance – she tapped _Hero and the Crown_ and _The Warrior’s Apprentice_ \-- are about people who are privileged in their society, but who also have qualities that make them different from, and not accepted by, the others in their society, and they have to figure out how to transcend that.”

“Hmm.” Elle looked thoughtful. “Okay. I might be able to work with that.”


	6. But bears it out even to the edge of doom

"Saints and angels, Emmett, is the rapture upon us?" Thomas demanded loudly.

Janet looked up from her card game with Sophia to see what Thomas was going on about, and blinked. Twice. "Emmett Forrest, is that a _suit_ you have on?" Janet was no judge of suits, but this one additionally looked rather nicely tailored, even to her untrained eye. "And what have you done to your hair?"

Sophia looked at Emmett suspiciously. "Look, the Sprat doesn't even recognize you!" Janet exclaimed. "Honey, that's Uncle Emmett," Janet said, more gently.

"I know that," Sophia protested. "He looks different."

"Elle took me shopping," Emmett mumbled, smiling at Sophia.

He looked a little ashamed of himself, and well he should be, Janet thought, amused, thinking of the multiple arguments he and Thomas had had about proper attire. Janet grinned, gesturing at the pink shirt she was wearing. “Okay, fine, I’d have to be wildly hypocritical to criticize you for it; Elle picked out this shirt as well.”

"Tell me about the Brooke Wyndham trial," Thomas said, waving away the suit and ushering Emmett to the kitchen table. "I know I've said harsh things about Callahan, but this is phenomenal, Emmett, he's finally letting you cross-examine?"

Emmett and Thomas plunged into a morass of legal terminology which Janet let slide off of her, going back to her game with Sophia. Emmett then started describing Elle's performance; apparently she had been a key part of the legal strategy that day, which as far as Janet could make out incorporated some sort of cheerleader move and outing someone on the stand -- "and Thomas, you should have seen her. She was magnificent. She's something special."

Something in Emmett's tone caught Janet's attention, and she turned to look at him just in time to catch a look of utter unguarded tenderness on Emmett's face. Good Lord, Janet thought, he's besotted with her.

She said hesitantly, "And... Warner. Is he still in the picture?"

She instantly regretted her words; Emmett's face shuttered, all emotion draining so quickly from his expression that she almost thought she had imagined his look. "Yes, he's still around," Emmett said quietly. He rose. "I'll let you get back to things," he said. "I just thought Thomas would be entertained by my new clothes."

"Poor bastard," Thomas said as they closed the door after him, and Janet knew he'd seen it too. "Ah, me. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

Janet grimaced in agreement.

*

Janet was surprised when Emmett came around the next evening; usually it was at least a week between visits, what with their schedules. And even more surprised when he opened his mouth and the words started tumbling over each other incoherently. "Janet -- Elle's going back to California -- Callahan hit on her -- she won't answer the phone or even open the door, I tried --"

"Hey," Janet said, noting with worry that Emmett was shaking. She steered him to the kitchen table and started talking to him in the quiet voice she used when Sophia got upset. "Hey. Calm down, kiddo. It's okay. We'll fix it. Talk to me. What's going on with Elle?"

Emmett took a deep breath. By this time Thomas had emerged from where he'd been filing papers and was looking at Emmett with concern. Emmett started, more slowly this time, to tell the whole story: Callahan propositioning Elle; Elle refusing; Callahan firing her; Elle barricading herself in her room. "And please, Thomas, don't tell me you told me so. You did, but I don't think I can handle it right now."

"No, of course not," Thomas murmured.

"She can't go," Emmett said, a little wildly. "I know she doesn't -- doesn't care about me like that, but I can't let her go. Not this way."

"I'm sure she doesn't want to go, really," Janet soothed. "I'm sure she's just panicking." She frowned. "I know you said she wouldn't talk to you -- you're probably too close to it all, really, I know how that can be, when one's having an existential crisis like that --" Janet could feel Thomas's anxious eyes on her, but hurried on-- "Is there anyone else she might talk to? One of the other interns? That ex-boyfriend of hers, perhaps -- do you think he could convince her to cool off and think about it?"

Emmett visibly pulled himself together. "Yes, of course, I'm sure Warner could do it, he won't want her to leave either in the middle of the trial. I should have thought of that myself. I’ll call him." He frowned in thought. "Or Vivienne, Warner's often hard to reach in the evenings." He took out his cell, dialed. Waited. "Right, Vivienne, then." He dialed again. "Vivienne? It's Emmett. It's about Elle -- " Emmett listened, for quite a while. " _Thank you_ , Vivienne," he breathed. "Call me the instant you have any news, okay?"

He looked up at Janet and Thomas. "Vivienne already knew, I’m not sure how. She told me she thought she could intercept Elle, and she'd let me know. And Vivienne -- she'll deliver. When she says she’ll do a thing, she always does."

Thomas said gently, "What are you going to do about Callahan?"

Emmett's mouth compressed. "I can't go back to Callahan. Regardless of whether Elle comes back. Regardless of whether she presses charges -- though of course I'll help her if she does. And oh God, Brooke." He closed his eyes briefly. "The only person who could talk to Brooke is Elle. She's going to be really upset."

Thomas said, "Is she likely to fire Callahan?"

Emmett scowled. "Quite possibly, even just knowing Elle is gone, without knowing the reason. I suspect she'd be almost certain to fire him if she knew the whole story."

"You said Elle was a good lawyer," Thomas said thoughtfully. "And I _know_ you are. Do you think the two of you could handle Wyndham's case yourselves?"

Emmett looked shocked. "Thomas, you can't be implying -- hmm." He thought about it for a minute. "That could... almost work. Elle could certainly handle it, and that would neatly solve the problem of Wyndham signing off on it. And if I'm supervising her, that makes it nice and legal given that she's not licensed herself. Well. Good thing I'd already decided I wasn't going back to Callahan." He started to laugh, slightly hysterically. "It would almost be worth it just to see Callahan's face."

Thomas put a hand on Emmett's shoulder. "Emmett, you know I'll help in any way I can. Let's think about this."

Janet left them wrangling about details and went into the bedroom, taking the phone. She dialed Elle’s number, getting her voice mail. “Elle… this is Janet. Hey. I heard about what was going on. I... just wanted to say that you're worth a lot. And I hope you stay." She was surprised to realize, as she hung up the phone, that it was true.

*

Thomas couldn't get off of work at such short notice, but since Janet didn't have to TA that day, she put off working on her dissertation to show up at the trial, and she was able to see Elle and Emmett's triumphant vindication of Wyndham. Janet pressed through the crowd to congratulate them. The two of them were talking to a terribly handsome, tall, dark-haired man when Janet got up to them.

“That was incredible,” Janet said honestly.

Elle beamed at her. “Wasn’t it?”

Emmett laughed. “Most trials aren’t quite so sensational!” he said. “Trust Elle to blow it up.”

“Oh,” Elle said, “by the way, Janet, this is Warner. I don’t think you’ve met him before. Warner, this is Emmett’s good friend Janet.”

“I’m so pleased to meet Emmett’s _friend_ ,” Warner said.

Janet wasn’t sure if she was imagining the slight leer in his voice, but she replied coldly and with emphasis, “Yes, my husband Thomas was in the same class at Harvard Law as Emmett.” Warner looked slightly chastened, but only slightly. Janet said graciously, “I understand you’re a first-year law student as well?”

“Yes,” Warner said, “I am – well, _was_ , I guess, now – one of Callahan’s interns. Excuse me.” He turned to Elle. “Elle, I’d like to talk to you; can we go somewhere a little less crowded?”

Elle glanced at Emmett. “I’ll catch up with you later,” Emmett said.

“Okay. Thanks for coming, Janet!” Elle said, and more softly, "And thanks for the phone call, that -- meant a lot to me." She smiled at Janet, nodded at Emmett, and walked off with Warner. Emmett stared in the direction they’d gone, but then shook himself, and his face became more animated. Janet watched a little worriedly; she was afraid he might have had a lot of practice in doing that. “Well, anyway, that was the famous Warner,” he said.

“He’s… very good-looking,” Janet said, for lack of anything better to say. Her first impression was also that he seemed like a bit of a jerk, but he was so model-gorgeous that she couldn’t really blame Elle too much for being a bit stuck on him.

“Yes, I know,” Emmett said, a little bleakly. “Still –“ he straightened – “she needs to do what makes her happy.”

Well, okay, maybe she could blame Elle; between Warner and Emmett, she thought, there was no contest as to who was superior. She thought, I like Elle, I do, but she’s an idiot.


	7. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments

Janet had had a sufficiently good time shopping with Elle that when Elle asked if she wanted to go shopping again, Janet had acquiesced without too much thought. This time, however, Elle was being extremely irritating. The chief reason for this was that Elle seemed to only want to talk about Emmett. Ordinarily Janet would have welcomed this, but right now it seemed to her to be uncalled for. Janet had started tuning Elle out when she heard, "...and I've tried to talk to him about what he wants in a girl, I've tried to steer him into romantic situations, and it just hasn't been working at all!"

"Wait," Janet said. "Back up. What happened to Warner?"

"Warner?" Elle looked honestly puzzled. "You don't think I'm still -- oh! No, I got over him ages ago. He thinks he wants me back now, but that's just a rebound thing since Vivienne broke up with him. And then Emmett was so amazing at Brooke's trial, he's so wonderful, do you realize what a sacrifice he made giving up his job with Callahan to help me, how could I help falling for him, he's not even in the same _category_ as Warner--" Janet rubbed her temples. She knew that the breathless rambling was just Elle's style, but sometimes it did grate. "And I've been dropping so many hints, only he doesn't seem to be interested, he doesn't even look at me --"

Janet thought crossly, Of course he doesn't seem interested, he resigned himself long ago to not being able to have you, for the past year he's been training himself that your touching and flirting mean nothing, what do you expect? He's probably spending all his mental energy trying _not_ to show you his feelings!

She snapped, "Why don't you just ask him directly, then? The worst he can say is no."

She regretted her tone immediately. Elle, thankfully, didn't seem to have taken offense. Elle said slowly, "Janet?"

"Yes?" Janet promised herself not to be irritated by anything Elle said, or at least not to show it.

"...How did you start dating Thomas, anyway? You guys were friends for quite a long time before you started dating, right?"

This was so far from what Janet thought she was going to say, and brought back so many memories, that Janet couldn't help but laugh out loud. "My college roommate Molly always says we were practically living in each other's pockets from the moment we met," she said, "yeah. But as for romance... I propositioned him one day senior year."

Elle's eyes looked very round. "Tell me more," she said.

*

That evening, after Sophia had gone to bed, Janet said to Thomas ruefully, "I'm not sure I'm at all a decent human being. Here I'm studying cultural relativism, and I can't recognize it myself when it hits me with an anvil."

"Hmm?" Thomas raised his head from the papers he'd brought home. She detailed her conversation with Elle to him. "I sincerely think the idea of actually, you know, asking him whether he was interested never even occurred to her!" Janet shook her head. "I feel sorry for her, really. We got to talking... she's from a whole different _world_ , Thomas. Until she came out here for law school, her whole family seriously expected her to be a model when she got out of college."

Janet went on, "The really weird thing is that she's actually read stuff like Simone de Beauvoir -- intellectually I don't think she has any issue with feminism or anything -- it's just that her cultural templates are all totally skewed. God! It's like, until she came out here, she was living in some sort of backwards time warp where women are just supposed to look pretty and never say or do anything. It's amazing she turned out like she did, quite frankly."

Thomas grinned. "Are you getting along better with her, then?"

Janet laughed. "I suppose I'd better, now, hadn't I -- if she's going to be dating Emmett we'll be seeing even more of her!"

"Well, we can hope," Thomas said. "Emmett said he was going to come to the firm picnic tomorrow -- we'll see if your lecture did any good then. If not we'll bop them both on the head. Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

*

 

At the picnic, Janet thought that Emmett looked like nothing so much as totally dazed with happiness. He smiled suddenly and at random intervals, and couldn't seem to keep his eyes off Elle, who for her part kept turning to him as if to assure herself that he was still there.

"You look quite smug," Thomas said in her ear, as Sophia looked in Janet's bag to see if Janet had brought any good books for her. "And well you should, my dear Pandarus."

"Hey," Janet complained softly, "I hope this ends a little happier than Pandarus' efforts!"

Thomas laughed. "From all accounts, once Elle's figured out what she wants, she doesn't give up on it without a fight." And indeed Elle was clutching Emmett's hand as if she'd never let it go. Emmett said something too low to hear to Elle, who kissed him in response.

Sophia, giving up on Janet's purse, stomped up to them. "Kissing is icky," she informed them. "Elle, if you're kissing Uncle Emmett, does this mean you're now part of our family?"

"Not because of that, honey,” Janet said, “but yes!"

Elle caught Janet's eye and smiled back, joyously. "Yes!" Elle echoed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta for a lightning-fast short-notice bemused read, and to the Little One, who cheerfully helped me experiment with what Sophia might be saying at around two years of age ("Can you say 'Emmett'? What about 'Sophia?'").
> 
> As in the original, Janet and Thomas tend to quote and make allusions indiscriminately, here including (in addition to the explicit text references) Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Isaiah, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and J.M. Barrie. The chapter titles are from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, and the title is from Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey."


End file.
